So a Wanstead team will face the winner of Enfield 1 v Chingford 2 in the Final to be played between 1st Feb and end of April – a Wanstead team in both the Finchley and Lawrance Cup Finals!

The online Planner now comes in a downloadable/printable version, available from the Planner cover page. This new version does not have the links to popups, etc., – if you want that additional information you need to access the online version – but will enable downloading and printing of your local copy. The format is pdf, in portrait or landscape layout. The portrait version has smaller print, but uses fewer pages. If you need larger print, use the landscape version, but recognise it needs more paper. The printable version will keep in step with updates to the online version. Before you print, think about the ENVIRONMENT.Link below to the Cover Page.

Lightning Championship – 3 October: Congratulations to Mark Murrell on his first success in this event, scoring 6/7 with a grading performance of 189. Mark’s five wins included success against first teamers Ian Hunnable and Vladimir Parols and a draw with Club Champion, David Spearman and with Philip Staniland. David Spearman came second with 5½, followed by Ian Hunnable, Terry Whitton, Philip Staniland, 4½. 18 entries. Full details link below.

Fixture changes… Planner update: There are a couple of fixture changes: i) Essex League 4th team, v Loughton 2, originally 26 October has been rearranged, at Loughton’s request and will now be played 11 January. ii) North Circular League, 3rd team v Barnet Eliz. 2, originally 2 November, is postponed, new date to be confirmed (29 March offered). Both changes are charted in the online Planner, and the Loughton 2 change, (but not yet the NC2 change, as it is not yet confirmed) in the downloadable “Murrell” (link below).

Club Championship, Round 2 – 24 October: A semi-upset for defending Champion, David Spearman, held to a draw by Laurie Burtt and a good result for Jean Mara with a win against Mark Le Gassicke, otherwise no upsets, but there are four games still to be played, so still some scope… Find latest results in the Club Championship page or from the Planner.

Handicap Blitz Grand Prix 1: The first of the 2017-18 Handicap Blitz Grand Prix takes place on 7 November in the Clubroom. This is the event with a time handicap: each game has a total of 16 minutes, with the stronger player getting less time, the weaker player more time. Five events over the season, with points aggregated over the series to find the Grand Prix winner, but each event can be taken separately and has its own prize fund, so members need not play in every event. Rules via the link below. Entries for 7 November to Mark Murrell (click this email link). Please register your intent to play so that the pairing software can be populated with player records.

U120 Training: Next session, Tuesday 31 October, in Roding room using the Smart board. Looking further ahead, the two sessions after that, in November are planned for Thurs 16 Nov and Thurs 30 Nov. Keep up with planned dates, using the Planner; all the U120 Training dates are shown in the extreme right column of the Planner, highlighted in yellow – can’t miss ’em!

Current season Club data: Remember: as circulated to all members, the main menu system above, is now in archive as we no longer have Administrator access to the website. The exception to this is the Statistics area linked from the ‘About’ menu (or link below). All current data is disseminated through front page posts like this one, with the main information of activities accessible from the Statistics menu. Use the Planner for an overview and looking ahead, use the stats pages for match information – results of past fixtures and dates for future fixtures for each team, with separate pages for standard games and rapid games. The plan is that we will be starting up a new website where we have full control when this site will remain as archive.

Following publication of the London League fixtures (see previous article, below) the fixtures for both the Essexand North CircularLeagues are now published and can be accessed from the links below. Fixtures Secretary Mark Murrell is to be congratulated on putting together another busy and complex season of League chess.

The Essex Division 3 fixtures required a little creative thinking for the League Secretary, David Millward, with eight teams. The Clubs were offered three options, a single round, a double round, or a hybrid system; they opted for the latter. The hybrid system involves splitting of the teams into two groups, which have been labelled “East” and “West” each double round, i.e. six fixtures. After this first stage, the top two in each group go into the “A Final” and the bottom two in each group go into the “B Final”. The teams in each final group play each of the new teams home and away, but not the team they met in the first stage as the original matches against that team count again in the Final stage. In order to ease the arrangement of these additional fixtures, Mark has wisely agreed provisional dates against all the prospective opponents in the Final stage, although only half of those matches will materialise. These provisional dates are listed in the fixture document, with an explanatory note. In due course, this document will be updated to show the live fixtures and remove the others.

The Webmaster is working on providing a Planner document derived from the program which collates the stats, but this is still in the early programming stages. In the meantime, Mark’s fixtures planner is available – link below – which will give members an overview of activity on any date.

As noted before, members are reminded that the place where the Club’s match results and player statistics will appear is in the Statistics option on the About menu (see menu bar above this article) or from the link below.

The London League fixtures are published and you can download our LL fixtures document (v2 06 Sep 2017) from the link below. While every care has been taken in producing this document, errors can occur; the definitive authority for all fixtures is the London Chess League website.

After several seasons when the League expected to have to move from Golden Lane, finally the move has happened and a new central venueis in play for 2017-18. This is Citadines Hotel, 94-99 High Holborn, London WC1V 6LF.

The new season stats for 2017-18 are now available. Apologies for the delay, but the Results program I use for collating the Clubs results needed a major upgrade to incorporate for the first time Rapid games in addition to Standard games. The change was needed to chart results for the John Philpott Trophy, newly inaugurated in memory of our late friend, the inimitable John Philpott.

The new trophy will be awarded to the member securing the highest score in all our Rapid game activities. These run from the summer competitions through to the completion of the following “winter season”. We play a lot of Rapid chess, starting with the Baum Trophy matches and the Essex Knockout in the summer, followed by the Lawrance and Finchley Cups in the winter and our own Rapid Championship in March.

The statistics can be found in the usual place on the ‘About’ menu under the ‘Statistics’ item, then select ‘2017-18’. The index menu for 2017-18 is expanded to indicate two reports in each of the main categories, each bearing a suffix of either “(S)” for Standard games and “(R)” for Rapid games. A separate Grading Performance report is available for each. Bear in mind when reading the Grading Reports that they include games played between 1 July and the following 30 June. Therefore, games played, for example, in May/June (such as the Baum Trophy “Bonanza Night” on 30 May) will not be included in the 2017-18 Grading Report, but of course nonetheless count towards the John Philpott Trophy for 2017-18.

The Statistics file is currently the only place where you will find our match records published, pending the new Club Website being up and running. So bookmark the page – link below – so you can find it easily when you need it. Or just go to the ‘About/Statistics’ menu.

E2 at Home to Barking 1 moved from 13/4 to 20/4;
N2 Away to Barking 1 moved from 20/4 to 13/4 with venue change, now HOME;
Sam Black Blitz at WH moved from 6/6 to 20/6 (no longer shown on Planner);
Previous changes now integrated.